Featured series 
Tag: Archaeology
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Nation & World
Harvard’s Mobile Yard Tour app
Harvard University is commemorating its 375th anniversary this year with a special gift — a mobile tour of Harvard Yard for visitors, neighbors, and members of the Harvard community.
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Nation & World
Peabody receives $150,000 grant
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology has been awarded a $150,000 Museums for America grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services.
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Nation & World
Digging in the Yard, it’s child’s play
Summer school students unearthed a variety of artifacts during their archaeology class in Harvard Yard, the most unusual of which was a fragment of a doll’s face from the 1800s.
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Nation & World
They dig the past
Harvard Summer School students broke ground June 29 for the biennial archaeology class investigating the long history of Harvard Yard. Students will resume the search for traces of the Harvard Indian College, where the College’s first Indian students lived and studied.
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History shines through the glass
Researchers are examining the Harvard Semitic Museum’s collection of ancient glass for clues about the people who made it and their interactions with other societies through trade.
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Nation & World
Mexico: Ancient Wisdom Examined
Harvard archaeologists from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology have been working in the Maya city of Copán Ruinas, Honduras, for years, unearthing the secrets of the civilization that once built pyramids there. In recent years, these archaeologists began digging at a new site, Rastrojón, perched on a mountainside where it would be visible…
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Nation & World
The search for China’s roots
Archaeologist Rowan Flad is seeking early traces of one of the world’s oldest civilizations.
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Looking past the plantation
Archaeologists examining the African-American past are broadening their focus to include a greater understanding of Africa, according to Christopher Fennell, who spoke at the Harvard African Seminar.
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Nation & World
Adrian Staehli named Loeb Professor of Classical Archaeology
Archaeologist Adrian Staehli, whose work has challenged conventional interpretations of nudity and the human body in ancient Greek and Roman art, has been named James Loeb Professor of Classical Archaeology at Harvard University, effective next Jan. 1.
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Nation & World
Getting a bird’s-eye view of the past
The archaeological work of Harvard students, using satellite photos to locate ancient structures, is on display at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
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Nation & World
Building on tradition
A Wampanoag home, called a wetu, is built on the site of Harvard’s Indian College.
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Nation & World
Medieval recycling
Radcliffe Fellow Robin Fleming peers into the history of early medieval Britain through the lens of material culture.
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Treasures unearthed
Students display results from a semester-long dig in Harvard Yard, including a musket ball, a slate pencil, and a piece of print type with the letter “o.”
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Deep into Harvard’s roots
Fall 2009 archaeology dig in Harvard Yard kicked off with a ceremony involving regional Native American leaders.
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Nation & World
The first tailors? Researchers find ancient fiber
“Making strings and ropes is a sophisticated invention,” said Ofer Bar-Yosef, a professor of prehistoric archaeology at Harvard University. “They might have used this fiber to create parts of clothing, ropes, or baskets — for items that were mainly used for domestic activities.” The fibers were discovered in an analysis of clay deposits in Dzudzuana…
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Nation & World
Oldest-known fibers to be used by humans discovered
A team of archaeologists and paleobiologists has discovered flax fibers that are more than 34,000 years old, making them the oldest fibers known to have been used by humans.
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Human colonization of Australia and the Americas examined
A recent symposium about the prehistory of Australia and the Americas brought together scholars from 10,000 miles apart. But that’s nothing compared to the journey early humans made to populate Australia and the Americas tens of thousands of years ago.
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Nation & World
Of Neanderthals and dairy farmers
Harvard Archaeology Professor Noreen Tuross sought to rehabilitate the image of Neanderthals as meat-eating brutes last week, presenting evidence that, though they almost certainly ate red meat, Neanderthal diets also consisted of other foods — like escargot.
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Nation & World
Harvard’s roots: From dirt to display case
Just a year after being pulled from Harvard Yard’s soil, the bones, buttons, pottery shards, and type from the press that printed North America’s first Bible are cleaned up and on display in a new exhibit at Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
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Nation & World
Student diggers take Harvard’s roots from dirt to display case
Emily Pierce ’10 was up to her hips in Harvard Yard, standing in a square hole in the ground, carefully scraping soil as she sought bits of archaeological treasure: a…
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Nation & World
Reading human history in the bones of animals
In a Siberian cave Patrick Wrinn found bones: bones of sheep and goats, bones of extinct bison and horses, of mammoths and wooly rhinoceroses. Wrinn, a doctoral student in archaeology at the University of Arizona and member of the Harvard Class of 1998, is trying to find out who — or what — put the…
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Nation & World
Free admission at Harvard museums
As part of Harvard Museum Community Days, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology will offer free admission on Sept. 21. Mexican folkloric dance company Xuchipilli Danza y Cultura will perform at 1 and 2 p.m. For families with young children, the museum will hold story time at 1:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. in the…
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Semitic Museum extends docent deadline
The Semitic Museum is currently seeking volunteer docents for the coming year. Docents will provide guided tours to school groups and the general public on the museum’s collection of archaeology of the ancient Near East.
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Maggie Spivey: Archaeologist, comedian, princess
Walk past Maggie Spivey in the Yard or on the streets of Cambridge, and you might find her with head down, eyes glued to the ground. She’s not being anti-social, or lamenting a flubbed grade — this dynamic archaeology concentrator just knows that often the most fascinating stories can be found underfoot.
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Nation & World
Eating meat led to smaller stomachs, bigger brains
Behind glass cases, Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology displays ancient tools, weapons, clothing, and art — enough to jar you back into the past. But the venerable museum offered a jarring moment of another sort in its Geological Lecture Hall last month (March 20). Paleoanthropologist Leslie Aiello delivered a late-afternoon talk on diet, energy, and…
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Nation & World
Digging history in Harvard Yard
It was crowded in the hole in Harvard Yard, with sophomore Reyzl Geselowitz and freshman Alison Liewen crouching in the square pit, elbow to elbow and more than a yard deep in Harvard’s dark earth.
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Nation & World
Colorizing classic statues returns them to antiquity
For artists of the Renaissance, the key to truth and beauty lay in the past. Renaissance artists assiduously studied the sculptures and monuments of Greece and Rome and emulated them…
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Nation & World
New research challenges previous knowledge about the origins of urbanization
Ancient cities arose not by decree from a centralized political power, as was previously widely believed, but as the outgrowth of decisions made by smaller groups or individuals, according to a new study from researchers at Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Edinburgh.
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Scientists have something to chew on
In a groundbreaking study, two Harvard scientists have for the first time extracted human DNA from ancient artifacts. The work potentially opens up a new universe of sources for ancient genetic material, which is used to map human migrations in prehistoric times.